Ceri Radford is Assistant Comment Editor of the Telegraph.

Why should Sarah Palin be retouched?

So the Republicans have got their knickers in a twist because Newsweek had the impudence to run a cover picture of Sarah Palin without female-friendly soft focus and touch-ups. Apparently showing a picture of a 44-year-old-woman in which you can see her wrinkles is ‘mortifying' and ‘a slap in the face'.

Why? The cover concerns the race to find America's next president, not America's next top model. It's a strong picture which is full of personality and bracingly free of the insipid, patronising trend to airbrush any woman in the public eye into poreless uniformity.

I bet you wouldn't hear a peep of complaint if Newsweek had run a picture of McCain looking majestically craggy.